Year 8 consider city sustainability during visit to Urban Planning Museum of Shanghai

  In support of their “Cities on the Edge” scheme of work in geography, pupils from year 8 undertook a two-part excursion, where they visited the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Centre, followed by fieldwork at the Xuhui Riverside Park. Led by Mr Matthew Corke, the purpose of this trip was to highlight the growing importance of finding fairer and more sustainable methods of developing cities and urban centres. “The pupils are being taught to look around them and consider the urban environment where more than half the world’s population now live. Is their city a well-designed and comfortable place to live? Is it a place where everyone can live well, or are elements of it closed off to certain economic groups? Is it environmentally sustainable too? These are the questions that pupils need to carefully consider as rapid urbanisation continues both in China and around the world.” – Mr Corke The exhibition centre visit gave the pupils the opportunity to see the remarkably detailed 3D model of Shanghai itself, that is updated every year to track the city’s rapid growth. The exhibition also provided plenty of information about future plans to redevelop and repurpose large areas of Shanghai in order to promote economic and ecological sustainability. Next was the Xuhui Riverside Park, also known as the Shanghai Corniche. As recently as 10 years ago, this area of Shanghai was heavily industrialised with docking infrastructure and storage bunkers for building materials and energy resources such as coal. Today, it is a totally repurposed open community space, featuring rock climbing walls, skateboarding areas, public parks and a riverside promenade. As well as enjoying some of the amenities themselves, the pupils conducted practical data collection, including land use mapping and asking other visitors survey questions about the changes that the area has undergone, and the quality of life in the area after its redevelopment. “The Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Centre was a great place to study the future of the city as well as its recent changes to promote sustainability. Later on, we went to Xuhui Riverside Park to ask some of the locals how they felt about its redevelopment from an industrial port to becoming an open public space. This got us thinking about how we live in cities now and how we should try and live more sustainably in the future.” – Daniel O'Shaughnessy, Year 8 Since the excursion, the Year 8 pupils have begun to reinforce their analytical skills. By collating and evaluating their fieldwork survey information, they are creating accurate graphs which will help them to visualise this factual data and draw their own conclusions on the subject of how sustainability is being promoted in Shanghai. As part of their follow-up work, the pupils are also being challenged to make their own sustainable city plan. As they will quickly discover, designing the ideal city – one which balances the tangible daily needs of its inhabitants with the long-term requirements of a sustainable future – is no easy task. However, it has allowed the pupils to consider the growing challenges that society faces when trying to build a fairer, safer and more environmentally-friendly future for its cities.